


The Seventh

by Brennah_K



Series: Slytherin Innocence. [1]
Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-11
Updated: 2012-10-11
Packaged: 2017-11-16 01:56:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/534188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brennah_K/pseuds/Brennah_K
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone mourns tragedies and losses in their own way; but when two people are so much alike and are suffering from the loss of the same person, is it any wonder that they observe the loss in the same way?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Seventh

Bowing his head as he slowly inhaled, drawing a breath to steel himself, Severus Snape slowly slid the tip of his index finger across the bottom edge of the iron wood picture frame. By the time his fingertip had circled the inside of the frame completely, the clear double panes, set into the center of the frame, frosted with the silver sheen of penseived memories.

After a second, deeply-held breath, Severus slowly lifted his head and opened his eyes to stare at the ghostly image of Lilian Rose Evans Potter, laid out in the grace of state, on the dawn of her funeral.

Entombed in Azkaban, himself, at the time of her funeral, Severus had not been able to attend, nor pay his respects to the memory of his only friend, Lily, but his colleague, Filius Flitwick had remembered how close his two former students had been and had preserved the memory for Severus.

When he could no longer bear to gaze at the ghostly memory, Severus set the frame in the center of the mantelpiece and slowly, with great reverence lit each of the three candles on either side of the frame - six in all - with the ever-lit candle that Flitwick had also given him. It had been lit from the magical immolation that was given wizarding heroes and heroines and would stay lit so long as the person possessing it remembered the witch or wizard, who had been lost to them.

Finally, after murmuring the wizarding benediction to honor the seventh year anniversary of a loss, Severus lit the seventh candle which hovered above, and just behind, the frame, then returned the Ever-lit candle to its place of honor a mirrored sconce in his study. It was the only light in his private study.

The seventh anniversary. In the wizarding world, the seventh anniversary was a particularly honored anniversary, be it of a birth, a wedding, or of a death. The seventh anniversary was always especially remembered.

Every year, Severus fasted from the dawn of October thirty-first until the dawn of November thirty-first, when he would visit her tomb, whisper that he missed her, and leave the single stem of a perfect asphodel lily on her tombstone before swearing, once more to protect the child that she had sacrificed her life to protect.  This year, however, was the seventh anniversary, and he had felt that something more must be done: something special to honor her sacrifice.

To that end, for weeks on end, he had appealed to the Headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, who had placed her son with his new guardians, to reveal under a fidelus charm, with an unknown other as the secret keeper, her son's location, so that he might check up on the boy, perhaps even discuss with him his intent to guard the boy from all harm, as surely the knowledge of how his parents had died must have weighed so heavily on his heart. For weeks, the headmaster would not hear of it... would not even allow Severus to even broach the subject, until Severus's growing silence and distance had finally worn the headmaster down in a manner that Severus had instinctively known his normally violent temper would never have gained him an inch. At last, the headmaster had finally agreed, but only after receiving Severus's oath that he would not yet mention to the boy any matter of  consequence, nor reveal his true identity - for the headmaster was convinced that it was too soon to reveal such matters to an as yet innocent child.

On receipt of the oath, Headmaster Dumbledore had finally relented and had given Severus a silver pendant, a fleur d'lys that was charmed to activate only on the thirty-first, taking him to 'Lily's child' no matter where he may be, and remain active until just after dawn on the first, when it would return Severus to the castle after allowing him to visit the second of its three charmed destinations, 'Lily's tomb', then return to its last destination, 'Hogwarts". While other's might have resented the cautions, as a blatant display of distrust, Severus was mollified by the headmaster's precautions. What good was his desire to protect the child, if the headmaster so easily gave the boy's location by allowing anyone to apparate to or from the location?

Even with the Headmaster's permission, his oaths and precautions in place, and the charmed fleur d'lyss in hand, Severus' observations did not run as smoothly as hoped as one of his enterprising students, attempting to transfigure pumpkin juice into firewhiskey, forgot a key characteristic of pumpkin meat's ability to seem to multiply when heated, and sprayed her entire dorm with boiling pumpkin juice. As a result, Severus had spent the entire evening brewing burn potions and pastes for Madam Pomfrey before he had finally been able to escape, an hour after dinner.

After lighting the candles, he had almost hesitated to activate the port key, certain that the now eight year old child must have certainly been fed and put to bed, even with the Halloween festivities at hand. If he had been able to think of any other way to honor her anniversary, he would have tucked the fleur d'lys away and thanked the headmaster in the morning, but his mind had strangely blanked, and finally, at a quarter to nine, he cupped the fleur d'lys in hand and murmured in a bare whisper, "Lily's child".

Instead of finding himself gently portkeyed, under a strong disillusionment charm (another of Albus's precautions), into the child's room as he'd expected, Severus found himself nearly losing his balance as one foot landed on a high, soft mound of sand as the other landed in the hole that the sand had, apparently been dug from. After a quick shuffle to regain his footing, at the expense of sand sliding into the edge of his heel and instep, Severus glanced around to note that he was standing in a leaf and debris-scattered sandbox at the edge of a spartan, suburban park that had the appearance of having been abandoned to the elements several years earlier.

His first thought was to wonder whether the blood wards cast on the child's house had automatically rejected him due to the dark mark. A moment later, however, the sound of rusty chain links rubbing against each other drew his attention to the presence of a child, idly saying back and forth barely seated in the tatty canvas-seated swing, trailing a toe through the wilted grass in the swing's path.

Glancing around a second time to be certain that there was not another child lurking around, Severus turned his surprised gaze back to the boy.

 It was difficult to believe that the child was Lily's. Lily's child, by Severus's estimation, should have been at least eight... possibly even nine.

He had lost track of Lily during the years he was pursuing his Potion's mastery, after a much regretted slip of his tongue in anger had squandered their decade long friendship. When he turned from Voldemort to spy for the order, in hopes of protecting his oldest and only friend, despite the ruin of their former relationship, it had become even harder to keep track of their lives, and afterward... it had simply been too painful to ask for the details of her few happy years spent with his childhood rival and tormentor. He had been certain, though, that she had gone into hiding for at least a year, and that the child was therefore by necessity (as the reason that she'd gone into hiding) over a year old, either fifteen or twenty seven months old... at least at her death.

Given that... seven years later... it seemed impossible that her son wasn't at least eight or nine, but the child swinging only several yards, with his tiny delicate hands wrapped tightly around chains so rusty that Severus suspected muggles updated their tetanus boosters before allow their children on the swing, was so small that he had to sit far forward in the aged and twisted canvas band simply for his feet to touch the ground.

He could not possibly be eight - six at best, and on the smaller side of six, even then. He could not possibly be Lily's child, or so Severus tried to convince himself before noticing the child's wrists. The child had Lily's wrists. Severus had always felt that  Lily was perfect in every way, even to the point of not being too perfect to be human; her wrists... between delicately muscled forearms that could endure hours of stirring potions without complaint and perfectly sculpted hands with long sensitive fingers that any potioner would desire... her wrists were practically knobbly and during their school years Lily had often worn long sleeves or thick bracelets with sticking charms to hide her wrists - never understanding Severus's conviction that her imperfect knobbly wrists made her all the more perfect.

Between the child's small delicate hands, with their long pale fingers fully visible wrapped around the thick rusty chain, and his gaunt, weedy forearms that appeared somewhat too developed even for a child of such a young age, were the broad, jutting joints of Lily's wrists. The cant of the child's dark haired skull seemed quite familiar, as well, as the boy rested his head against his fingers and the chain on one side. The boy's oversized clothing made discerning other similarities difficult, but Severus had seen enough to drop the disillusionment spell with a soft whisper.

The child stiffened at the whisper, seeming aware of his presence, but remained too focused on some internal thought or whimsy to truly take notice of him, or wonder at his presence. As he drew near, Severus was startled to hear the child murmuring to himself.

“I know you are in Heaven with God and his angels, Mommy, and I know that you’re happy there. That’s good. I love you, Mommy. I want you to be happy, but I miss you so many bunches of bunches that it hurts sometimes the way it does when I don’t get dinner, or like one of Dudley’s kicks.  I wish I was there with you, but Dudley says that freaks don’t go to heaven, and Uncle Vernon says he’s right, so I haven’t tried to be with you. I miss you something awful, though. You must have been a really, really good mommy for me to miss you this much. I know you were, and I know God and Baby Jesus must be really happy that you’re there to because Baby Jesus must have needed a really good mommy for God to take you away from me. Please take care of him, real well. Everyone says that he’s really special and deserves a good mommy like you. I wish... “ the pathos of the child’s words as he trailed off made Severus’s heart go weak, as did the unspoken remainder of the wish.

He had expected the child to miss his mother, perhaps, if he even remembered his mother. He had obviously been so young when she died, but he had not expected the depth of pain or sadness in the child’s voice, nor the utter desolation of his words. This was Lily’s child, the child he was to protect; how was it possible for her child, to be so utterly heartbreaking when he was supposed to be under both the Headmaster’s and his family’s care.

“She loves you, child.” The words of consolation broke his lips before he had time to think, causing the child to finally spin in surprise. When the child was finally facing him, Severus was startled to see a thin long stemmed flower in the boy’s lap.

When the child neither spoke, nor tried to run, Severus took a step forward and knelt, asking in a soft voice. “What do you have there?”

“It’s a fake lily.” Lily’s child answered, solemnly, obediently, but in a whisper that seemed almost dragged out of him, “Aunt Petunia says they are ‘common weeds’, and always has me pull them up and throw them away, but she never comes to the back of the tool shed, and sometimes I can save them if I put them back in the ground the right way and take care of them.”

“It’s beautiful.” Severus commented softly around a strange tightness in his throat.

“Yeah, but… they die. I can never take good enough care for them to live through winter. I try but I’ve never been able to save one.”

The child’s words seemed to have a deeper meaning, and underlying meaning that he thought they somehow both understood, so Severus let his own words carry a deeper meaning as well. “I know, there are times no matter that how hard we try, we cannot save something… someone so truly beautiful.”

“Yeah.” Looking beyond, Severus to the shallow hole in the sand, Lily’s child finally stood and walked with a slow uneven step. Kneeling slowly until his bare knees touched the sandy ground, the child carefully laid the Lily in the bottom of its sandy hole and slowly carefully used his hand to sweep the sand into the flower’s makeshift.

The symbolism of it chilled Severus to the bone, as if he had stepped on Lily’s true grave, and Severus could not find the words in him to mark the child’s action. Once the sandy grave had been patted into place, Harry stood glanced at him briefly and then walked away without explanation.

Severus could hardly fault him; they had said everything that needed to be said, and even if to the child, they had perhaps discussed only a garden weed – though Severus didn’t think so- they had discussed matters of great consequence, and Severus felt that he commemorated the seventh anniversary of her death. He could leave off staring at a sandbox grave, in good conscience, knowing that Lily was well remembered.

Still, when he finally whispered, “Hogwarts” to return from her final resting place, the moon gently lit the base of the marble tomb and two commemorative lilies: one perfect and preserved by an ever-fresh potion, the other slightly crumbled and covered in sand. The seventh anniversary was always especially remembered, and it was only fitting that her son’s offering rest with his own.


End file.
